pentagon acquisition reform

RUSSIA: U.S. Intelligence Reports Russia Recently Test Fired S-500 System From Military Watch: “Just days after Russian President Putin called for the country's next generation air defence system, the Almaz Antey S-500, to enter mass production quickly, U.S. intelligence reports have indicated that the Russian military has conducted a test firing of the new weapons system.”

Crowd-Sourcing the Character of Urban Warfare, V2.0By John Amble, Modern War Institute: “The world is urbanizing, and doing so quickly. By 2030, 60 percent of the global population will live in cities. At the same time, the U.S. military remains committed to maintaining the capability to conduct an immensely wide range of operations—from humanitarian assistance and noncombatant evacuation to security force assistance and high-intensity conflict.

The big shift and American foreign policy​Eminent scholar Walter Russell Mead compares the dysfunction and failures of American politics today with those of the generation after the Civil War. Then as now, he says, American society did not have the policy ideas or the institutions needed to meet a wave of new challenges, and the result was a generation of turmoil and discontent.

Why the Corps Wants to Fight With Fewer Marines​By Shawn Snow, Marine Corps Times: “The Marine Corps is setting in motion plans to shrink the size of the traditional rifle squad, cutting manpower for the Corps’ most basic building block of combat power from 13 Marines down to 12 — a risky move that the Corps admits could fail.”

This Stinger Missile Is Back By Charlie Gao, The National Interest: “The U.S. Military is now upgrading their Stinger to the new FIM-92J and FIM-92K models to effectively counter all aerial threats in the near future. ”

Why an F-22 Raptor Would Crush an F-35 in a 'Dogfight'​From The National Interest: “The U.S. Air Force’s original plan was for the F-22 to be its high-end air superiority fighter while the F-35 was designed to be primarily an air-to-ground strike aircraft, but one which could defend itself. ​

The F-35 Could Become a 'Navy' Killer By Charlie Gao, The National Interest: “The requirements were: to meet the challenges of a future (up to 2040) ship-to-ship combat environment; to have a high probability of penetrating enemy air defense and countermeasures; to be effective in confined and open waters; and to be easily adaptable to different platforms.”

The $700 billion in enacted defense spending for 2018 is a substantive increase over 2017 enacted and 2018 requested spending. However, the $716 billion topline for 2019 just keeps pace with inflation.

The administration’s first five-year budget, the Future Years Defense Program, suggests the overall fiscal outlook for defense spending will flatline in 2020 and beyond.

The president’s 2019 budget allocates 87 percent of new funding above last year’s appropriations to military personnel and operations and maintenance, with most of the remainder going toward research and development.

For the second year in a row, the Trump administration’s budget request underfunds procurement in favor of pursuing a capability-centric modernization program, imperiling the future health of the force by underresourcing capacity and the recapitalization of legacy systems.

The three-year streak of defense increases was driven largely by Congress. Policymakers should work to ensure a balanced portfolio of investment to match the defense strategy.

SOCOM's Top 10 Tech Needs From National Defense Magazine: “As the Pentagon puts renewed focus on preparing for great power competition, U.S. Special Operations Command is looking for new capabilities to support its warfighters.”

New Reconnaissance Tools Needed to Assist Special Operators By Vivienne Machi, National Defense Magazine: ““We are getting so much information that we can’t go through it all,” said Glen Cullen, program manager for sensitive site exploitation within the program executive office for special reconnaissance, surveillance and exploitation.”

The U.S. Special Operations Command has about 67,000 troops and an annual budget of around 14 billion dollars. That may not seem to be a huge dent in the overall DoD budget (about 2%), but it greatly outnumbers the special operations budgets of other U.S. allies around the world. With deployments operating at high frequencies today and with operations increasing in places like Syria, what should we be thinking about in terms of the impact on U.S. Special Operations in the coming decade?

The Cipher Brief’s Brad Christian talked with Former Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence (and Cipher Brief Expert)Dr. Michael Vickers recently about this increasingly important instrument of American power:

From the conversation:

"The new big warfighting challenge for SOF is Russian hybrid warfare, particularly along the periphery of the Russian Federation. SOF can play a pretty big role because it may be hard to trigger NATO’s collective defense article early in a conflict when the Russians are engaged in subversion and covert proxy warfare."

"More potential adversaries are acquiring advanced air defenses, so clandestine air infiltration may be a lot harder in the future. When I grew up as a young pup in the Special Forces, there was 50/50 chance that Air Force special operators could insert us into Eastern Europe...down the road, SOF will need very low observable aircraft, or it won’t be able to accomplish some important missions that we need them to conduct."

"For some of the demanding SOF missions, you need to develop not only new technologies, but also the tactics, techniques and procedures and area knowledge you’ll need to be effective. With prolonged, intensive deployment cycles, we really haven’t had the time we need to do this. Most of what we’ve developed since 9-11 has been for the current wars."

The United States spends half a trillion dollars a year on scientific research — more than any other nation on Earth — but China has pulled into second place, with the European Union third and Japan a distant fourth. China is on track to surpass the United States by the end of this year, according to the National Science Board. In 2016, annual scientific publications from China outnumbered those from the United States for the first time. - Washington Post

China's Three Warfares Strategy and BlockchainBy Wilson VornDick, RealClearDefense: “With the lockdown in the commercial sector, has Chinese interest in blockchain shifted to other industries or sectors, such as the military (People’s Liberation Army (PLA))?”

Blockchain Can Protect the Supply Chain By Henry Bond, Proceedings Magazine: “The question of supply chain trust received attention last fall when Kobe Steel revealed it had lied about the quality of the steel it was manufacturing. ”​

Prepare the Army for Future Urban Battlefield By John Amble & John Spencer, Army Magazine: “Adequately preparing the Army to operate effectively in cities will require a range of changes, but three initiatives would combine to lay a much-needed foundation.”

Innovation Determinants of the World’s First Integrated Air Defense System By Austin M. Duncan, Strategy Bridge: “The prospect of air power dominated the outlook of future war at the dawn of the interwar period. Many theorized offensive air power would soon prove the decisive force of war, and the battlefield would never be the same thanks to the unprecedented destructiveness of aerial bombing attacks.”

How We Lost the Great Pacific WarBy Dale Rielage, Proceedings Magazine: “Once the dust clears from the congressional inquiries and the various special commissions, it will be a challenge to sort the wheat from the chaff to discover and implement the real lessons for our Navy.”

Sizing up the U.S. Navy’s Future Guided Missile Frigate Designs By Claire Apthorp, Naval-Technology: “FFG(X) will be an “agile, multi-mission platform designed for operation in littoral and blue water environments”. It should be able to operate independently or integrate with a task force to conduct offensive and defensive surface, anti-submarine, and air warfare roles.”